Reliance Industries (RIL), on Tuesday successfully commissioned the world's largest refinery off-gas cracker at Jamnagar, as the largest-ever expansion of its petrochemicals portfolio comes to a flawless completion.

This is one of the largest capital expenditure programmes globally in the sector in recent times that epitomises RIL's core strategy of continuously pursuing opportunities for cost optimisation and efficiency enhancement through vertical integration across the value chain.

This innovative approach of integration with refineries provides a sustainable cost advantage, making ROGC competitive with respect to the crackers in Middle East and North America which have feedstock cost advantage.

The ROGC complex is a core component of RIL's J3 project at its integrated refinery-petrochemicals complex at Jamnagar.

ROGC design is highly flexible and energy efficient. Given the complexities of such a plant, the start-up has been flawless. The unique configuration with sustainable cost advantage, competitive project schedule, lower capital cost and incident-free flawless start-up makes ROGC complex as one of the best-executed project globally from concept to commissioning.

It is the latest addition to RIL's existing cracker portfolio, consisting of cracker facilities at Nagothane in Maharashtra and Hazira, Dahej and Vadodara in Gujarat.

The group has a combined ethylene capacity of close to 4 mmtpa at five of its manufacturing sites.

With ROGC and imported ethane, RIL has a flexible cracker portfolio.

Ethylene from ROGC is used in downstream plants to produce mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) and polyethylene (LLDPE and LDPE). Similarly, propylene from ROGC has enhanced output of the existing polypropylene (PP) plants at Jamnagar complex to produce high-value copolymers.

The commissioning of MEG plant marks completion of all-round expansion of the polyester value chain after the commissioning of para-xylene (PX), purified terephthalic acid (PTA), polyester filament and poly ethylene terephthalate (PET) plants over the last three years.

With the commissioning of LLDPE and LDPE plants at Jamnagar along with its existing PE plants at other manufacturing sites, RIL has capability to produce the entire range of PE grades covering all end-uses in the Indian market.

Reliance Industries shares closed 0.15 per cent up at Rs 911.15 on the National Stock Exchange.